Five questions to ask to about any project and four bonus questions
This article is not just about the definition of a project. If that is what you wanted, you could just Google that. This is more about whether this “project” is truly a project, or just another waste of time! This is part of my mission: to rid the world of unnecessary projects. To give you an idea of why having too many projects is a bad idea, just read this case study about the negative effects of having too many projects.
Here are the five most important questions to determine whether this “project” is a true project:
1. Does it have a goal?
Does the so-called project have a goal, and is it clearly stated? Ideally, the goal needs to adhere to the principles of SMART. In this case, SMART means the goal must be stated Simply, it must be Measurable, i.e. the business must be able to differentiate between the before and after state, it must be Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. A good example of a goal statement is “have the new payroll system implemented by the end of the financial year”.
The goal is the What! statement of the project. Next up is the When! part (or the time-bound component).
2. Does it have an end date?
If it does not have an end date, does it have a hand over date? For instance, the new payroll system has a go-live date in the new financial year. This means the project team knows they have to have all the kinks worked out before the 1st day of the new financial year. Having a nebulous end or handover date has some serious risks. The risks with having a very open-ended closing include:
- The project ends up being a zombie
- There will no sense of urgency.
- People will be tempted to add on, causing scope creep, which means the project will run even longer and cost even more money.
3. Are there multiple people involved?
This is the Who! part of the project. Who will do what it takes to achieve the goal, by the stated time?
If this is just one person’s pet “project”, then why waste company resources on it. Let them explain to their bosses why they are working on it and do not get involved!
If there are multiple people involved, are they the right people? My favourite example of this was the HR team wanting to implement fingerprint readers as biometric access control. The factory the teams worked at had furnaces, which meant that many of the factory workers’ fingerprints had long since burned off. If the HR people had just involved the factory teams earlier in the project, they would have wasted a lot less time.
4. Does it solve a problem?
Using the same example as above, the problem the HR team was trying to solve was that people would often forget or even lose their access cards. As you can see, this is not an organisational or access control problem, but a behavior problem. So, you need to ask: does this project solve a problem, and is it a real problem?
If it does not solve a specific problem, there has to be a very good reason why it must be done. Generally, the only other reason it could be is a regulatory or compliance requirement.
Often the project team know clearly what the benefits of the project are – all the bells and whistles – but…
…it’s a bit like buying a Ferrari when a bicycle would do.
5. Is this business as usual?
The final good question to ask is if this is not just business as usual? This is best illustrated by an example: take an FMCG company, where product redesign and product relaunches are part of the ongoing marketing strategy. This means these redesigns and relaunches should not be handled as projects each time, but rather have a standard operating procedure to deal with them.
Hopefully, the five questions above will help you determine if this is truly a project or not. And if it is truly a project, you can always follow up with these bonus questions:
- Is it aligned with the organisation’s strategy?
- Has the project manager documented all of the above?
- Have the risks been identified?
- Is the plan detailed and have the tasks been assigned to people?
With any luck, all the above will lessen the number of projects you have to deal with and make those that you are part of a success.